


Comparing Ring Binders

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Book: Unseen Academicals, Gen, ring binders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:49:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26604754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: Comparing ring binders (and tyrants)
Relationships: Miss Healstether/Lady Margolotta (Discworld), Rufus Drumknott & Miss Healstether, Rufus Drumknott/Havelock Vetinari
Kudos: 16





	Comparing Ring Binders

“Do they know?” Miss Healstether waggled a thumb at the other room. 

Drumknott reverentially placed a ring binder on the table. It was full of documents and the cover was perfectly level. “They know a lot of things,” he said absently. He turned over the paperboard cover and opened the rings by the tabs at either end of the coverboard.

“You’d think they’d realize, seeing the Low Queen and her secretary, almost step for step a mirror image.”

Drumknott sighed. “Britta Healstether, my current relationship to my employer is _annoyed with him.”_

Healstether laughed. 

“There’s a tipping point in success stories, even in Ankh-Morpork, where people become reluctant to challenge someone.”

“But surely you haven’t reached— People are always arguing—“

“In a real sense, we have reached that point. The world is a thing with a sting in its tail and it shouldn’t be used for self-flagellation. There’s a sort of psychological exoskeleton people build around themselves to survive life and it needs to be shed at intervals or else you suffocate in your own skin. His Lordship has no sense of his obligations to himself and it makes me angry.” Drumknott snapped the binder rings closed with a single touch, by way of punctuation.

“I don’t think I could love someone like that. Her Ladyship clearly thinks she knows best, but she genuinely has her feet on the ground. But of course she’s not in charge of the _entirety_ of anywhere. Überwald is in a state of factional turmoil, different groups looking after their own. It should not be unified again. Not as it currently stands. Unification would mean someone ends up at the top of the pile.” 

Rufus closed his eyes. “It makes me angry because I am close to being the same way. I create an environment where very little can hurt me. I’m the head clerk, the nexus of a network of spies and assassins. I’ve been at the point of having almost no one question my judgment and expertise for longer than he has. It’s a frightening position to be in because I need so much structure. I am inarguably a leader, but I can’t be the one building the framework. Chaos scares me. I cannot face entropy. I have to look away from the abyss.”

“And here’s me just rattling around hoping for books and sex.” Healstether smiled warmly.

Healstether pulled a couple more ring binders out of her bag.

“This one’s a slant-d ring and this one is four circle rings.”

“They hold fewer pages than my design,” Drumknott noted.

“But they are more durable.”

“They are ring binders, not battle crumpets!” Drumknott said, loudly enough that Margolotta and Vetinari would hear from their comically long dining table.

“I have added pockets to the binderboard to hold pages that haven’t been hole-punched.” Healstether opened her half-full binder to the back cover.

Drumknott lifted the ring binder, tugging at the paperboard pocket to see how strong it was. “Hmm. Could be useful for small documents and iconographs. Where’s the paper and cardboard from?”

“Sto Kerrig.”

“Ah. Waterproof. Very good. Shame the mill burned down again.”

“Did it really?”

“They keep trying to put it out with water. Doesn’t work.”

Healstether looked at her waterproof ring binders with a modicum of alarm.

“Why do they have to be so sturdy? Are people taking ring binders trekking through the wilderness expecting flash floods and avalanches?”

“I was thinking school children might be able to use them.” 

“Ah.” Drumknott considered this. “Wouldn’t they get their fingers caught in the rings?”

“Possibly.”

“Is the adhesive on the reinforcement stickers cabbage glue?”

“No? Should it be?” Healstether wondered.

“It attracts snails. Apparently.” A haunted look came into Drumknott’s eyes and Healstether decided not to pursue the matter.

“What do you use to cut the rings?

“I had a device made to do that, slices right through the metal.”

Britta ran her hand across the rings and the cover of the binder. “This is a thing of beauty. You’re a bit of an aesthete, aren’t you?”

“I would not describe myself that way.” He picked up Healstether’s half-full ring binder again. “What’s your labeling system on these dividers?”

The binder fell open to a section labelled ‘Nutt’s Contributions To Literary Criticism.’

“Are you interested in poetry?”

“You co-parented. Nutt was your ward too. What is post-post structuralism?”

“A response to a discourse in which language does not reflect reality and power is a representative phenomenon rather than concrete. A response to attempts to find a new starting point. I think generally post-PS is a bridging with broader culture. A little breath of the possibility of making meaning amid negation.”

“A game of smoke and mirrors.”

“That’s what Lady Margolotta says.”

“While you can’t change what people want to do, you might just be able to change what they’re looking at."

Healstether’s hands were resting flat on the green cardboard of Drumknott’s ring binder. She had long fingers with fastidiously short nails. “In a better world than this—“ she began.

“What?”

The librarian lifted one hand to wipe something from the corner of her eye. “One shouldn’t be trying to get the venom of this scorpion world into their blood, but you have to break the ice against something.”

“Do you? Or do you just need enough time in the sun?”

“In a better world than this, cold starlight would be warm enough.”


End file.
